My father, Miles Vaughan Williams, who has died aged 98, received global recognition for his work on heart rhythm problems. He realised that these were the commonest cause of sudden death, and his main contribution was to put the pharmacological treatment of arrhythmias on a firm scientific basis. He conducted pioneering work on beta-blockers, which have saved countless lives since. The Vaughan Williams index of anti-arrhythmic drugs – established in 1970 – is still used today. His work was recognised with an honorary fellowship of the American College of Clinical Pharmacology and an honorary doctorate from the Sorbonne.
Son of Stella (nee Pressey) and Arthur Vaughan Williams, he was born in Bangalore, India. His father, first cousin of the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, was an engineer charged with managing all the steam engines of the Madras and Southern Mahratta railway. Aged six, Miles was sent to Crowthorne Towers prep school in Berkshire, then to Wellington college. He went to Wadham College, Oxford, in 1937 to read classics and philosophy.
A conscientious objector, he drove ambulances during the London blitz, then joined the Volunteer Ambulance Service and was posted to Northumberland with the Durham Light Infantry, acting both as ambulance driver and medical assistant. These experiences changed the course of his career and he began attaining the necessary qualifications to read medicine at Oxford, teaching himself chemistry, physics and biology with the help of local libraries. After completing his studies, he became a leading pharmacologist and in 1955 was appointed the first science fellow at Hertford. He taught medical students at Wadham and Hertford Colleges.
He found Hertford College to be “a complete slum” and decided to improve it, without dispensation from his other duties. He led a programme of rebuilding that transformed the college in the 1960s, providing hot and cold water to rooms that had previously relied on jugs of hot water delivered by college servants every morning. His pièce-de-résistance was his design for the Holywell Quadrangle, which was then created by the architect Peter Shepheard.
All income earned from pharmaceutical company consultancies was put into trust and remained unused until his retirement, when it became the Vaughan Williams Fund. This provides assistance to Hertford clinical medical students, including grants to work in the developing world.
Miles was keen to keep fit and enjoyed twice-weekly rounds of golf into his 96th year. He was persuaded by younger golfing friends to write a book describing his fitness regime. You Don’t Need a Gym was published in 2010.
He married Marie (nee Londés de Payen de L’Hôtel de Lagarde) in 1956. She survives him, along with their three children, Dominique, Roland and me, and two grandchildren, Hugh and Matthew.
